Various approaches have been proposed for monitoring, simulating, or testing web sites. Examples include U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,966 B1 (Howard, et al., Aug. 21, 2001), “Method and System for Emulating Web Site Traffic to Identify Web Site Usage Patterns.” However, this example addresses substantially different problems (problems of simulation and hypothetical phenomena), and thus is significantly different from the present invention. Other examples include U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,956 (Bryant, et al., Jun. 20, 2000) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,254 (Maddalozzo, et al., Jul. 28, 1998). Other examples include services available from vendors such as Atesto Technologies Inc., Keynote Systems, and Mercury Interactive Corporation. These services may involve a script that runs on a probe computer. The examples mentioned above do not necessarily provide graphical tools for directing problem—solving efforts toward a component that is causing a problem.
When a problem occurs, lack of useful information can hamper efforts to restore the proper performance of an application in a network environment. These applications may involve many hardware and software components, so it may be difficult to quickly identify a component that is causing a problem. Thus there is a need for tools that quickly identify the cause of an outage at the component level, and properly focus problem—solving efforts for applications in a network environment, including but not limited to web sites and web services.